Tucker Carlson Says “Honestly” Doesn’t Know Why Fox Pulled Him Off The Air, & He’s Good With That – Kinda

Dominic Patten
·4 min read
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“I don’t know why I was fired, I really don’t,” declared Tucker Carlson today on his sudden departure from the airwaves of Fox News on April 24. “I’m not angry about it,” the former primetime host told pal Russell Brand. “I honestly don’t know.”

“I was surprised,” Carlson said at another point in the heavy hyped interview on Brand’s podcast. “I didn’t you know expect to get fired that morning at all in April. So, I was shocked, but I wasn’t really shocked. And I wasn’t mad. It’s not my company. And when you work for someone else, that person reserves the right and in fact has inherently the right to decide whether you work there or not.”

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“You can believe me or not, but …I wish Fox well,” one-time GOP kingpin Carlson added.

Carlson may wish his former employer well, but as the two sides continue to scuffle over his more than $20 million 2025 ending contract and his new-ish Twitter show, there didn’t seem to be much good will between the lines between the parties Friday. Touching on topics ranging from Donald Trump (Tucker now says he loves the former Celebrity Apprentice host) rural life, brutalist architecture, and the January 6 attack on the Capitol (“not an insurrection,” according to the self declared violence-hating Carlson), the chummy sit-down with Brand on the latter’s Rumble show took a dark turn when it came to his pink slipping of sorts from Fox and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Light on his narrative feet and clearly aware of any legal fallout, Carlson offered two opinions simultaneously on the company and the role the ongoing war possibly played in his quick exit after years as Fox’s top ratings draw:

They didn’t agree with me, of course, I don’t think, but they were always very nice to me. And they always let me say what I wanted. Not one time did they tell me not to say anything. So, I was always grateful to Fox and I am in retrospect grateful to Fox for that. So that never changed up until the moment they called me and said, you know, we’re taking the show off the air.

And so, I can only speculate, I know.

But I do think as a general matter, not even about me, the war in Ukraine is a red line for a lot of people in business and politics. You see it in our politics in the US where the leaders of the Republican Party in the Congress, who like are repulsive, in my view, are now supporting sending cluster bombs to Ukraine. Ukraine is losing the war, obviously. The Ukrainians are dying in huge numbers and the country is being destroyed. And so, the US could force a peace like tonight, they could, uniquely. They have that power. And they won’t, and they’re continuing to allow Ukrainians to be killed in the country to be devastated.

So, I don’t know their motive, I can only guess but I know that if you criticize that they, they really are intent on making you be quiet.

Credit – Rumble
Credit – Rumble

Carlson was unceremoniously pulled off less than a week after Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million on the first day of trial to settle defamation claims over false 2020 election claims. In the months leading up to the trial, scathing internal correspondence from Carlson and other Fox hosts attacking Donald Trump, company, the very notion of the Stop the Steal movement and sinking ratings were made public.

Never a stranger to controversy, nor fanning dangerous flames, the Tucker Carlson Tonight host was also named in a lawsuit from former producer Abby Grossberg over the “toxic workplace culture” on the show. Fox settled that suit for $12 million on June 30.

On the matter of Carlson’s contract, his Hollywood attorney Bryan Freedman has previously claimed that Fox breached the deal in an effort to argue that a non-compete agreement was no longer valid. As the parties have also been fighting over Carlson’s June 6 launched Twitter show, incendiary BTS footage and more of Carlson that was leaked to media outlets has become a battlefield as well. Freeman has suggested that Fox was behind the leak of Carlson’s private communications.

Something his client today seemed to partially disagree with, or at least obfuscate.

“There was you know, ugly leaking and I’m a racist or whatever they leaked, someone there leaked to the New York Times,” Carlson said of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox. “But that’s not true, and I think the people who run the company know that’s not true. Actually, don’t think they did it. And I’m not mad about it. And I’ve been happy.”

Fox had no comment on Carlson’s comments today. Attorney Bryan Freedman did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on his client’s interview with Brand. If or when he does, we will update this post.

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